An article that caught my eye over at the Electronic Intifada is a few weeks old, from September 2nd in fact. Nigel Perry discusses The Wall that is currently being built to encage Palestinians, from a truly artsy point of view. Two artists, Nathan Edelson and Banksy, representing really the two ways you can look at this wall. The former wishing to whitewash it as the issue itself is being done by Israel, and the latter chipping away at it with a brush and stencils. Anyways it’s a really interesting and enjoyable read.

Graffiti artist Banksy recently hacked the wall this past summer. Here are some of the results with a few excerpts from the article.

â??How illegal is it to vandalize a wall,â? asks Banksy in his website introduction to his Wall project, â??if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice? The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km - the distance from London to Zurich. The International Court of Justice last year ruled the wall and its associated regime is illegal. It essentially turns Palestine into the worldâ??s largest open-air prison.â?

Banksy’s site offers two snippets of conversations with an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian who happened upon him while he was in the process of creating the series of nine pieces on the Wall, in Bethlehem, Abu Dis, and Ramallah.

Soldier: What the fuck are you doing?

Me: You’ll have to wait til it’s finished

Soldier (to colleagues): Safety’s off

…a conversation Banksy reports having with an old Palestinian man:

Old man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.

Me: Thanks

Old man: We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home